


never look better then when you wear your animal skin

by distractionpie



Series: EreJean Week 2020 [3]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: (I've decided I'm on a mission to make that a thing), Alternate Universe - Ballet, Alternate Universe - Rock Band, Jean Kirstein has Nice Legs, M/M, They literally do nothing but fight in this fic, Unresolved Sexual Tension, but Eren thinks that’s very sexy of them, by which I mean, music video
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-01
Updated: 2020-04-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:53:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23425066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/distractionpie/pseuds/distractionpie
Summary: When his label demands a music video despite Eren's creative block, he chucks some reject material their way and leaves Armin to sort out the details. But the discovering that Armin has cast a ballet dancer as the video’s star, which seems about as ill-fitted to Eren's anti-establishment message as he could go, drags Eren's attention back into the process. And it's held fast when he discovers the dancer is an uppity pretty boy whose scorn for Eren is so clearly held back by a thread so thin the urge to snap it is irresistible.
Relationships: Jean Kirstein/Eren Yeager
Series: EreJean Week 2020 [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1681744
Comments: 8
Kudos: 62





	never look better then when you wear your animal skin

Eren frowned.

He wasn’t used to frowning. Screaming, glaring, scowling, swearing at the top of his voice were all familiar parts of his rock-and-roll repertoire.

“Armin,” he said, trying not to whine at his best friend. “What the hell?”

Armin shrugged.

“I asked for your input. You said you didn’t want to deal with it,” he reminded Eren. “So I took a recommendation from a friend of mine.”

It was true he’d left the choice up to Armin, but he'd assumed his friend would plan a video in line with their usual style. Perhaps something with swords or explosions or at the very least the smashing up of a hotel room.

The set on which his latest music video was shot shouldn’t involve long mirrors and what he’d heard the techs call a ballet barre. Not unless they were being smashed to pieces.

But the downside of having Armin as his manager was that sometimes Armin managed him.

This was revenge, plain and simple. Armin wasn’t doing this because some industry friend recommended it, it was to get back at Eren for the fact he’d barely been writing anything lately and whenever the label called to press him for new material, he just redirected them to Armin. Whenever the label called about anything, he redirected them to Armin. Clearly, if Eren wasn’t going to help with the decision making, he was going to have to deal with bad ones like this.

“It’s—” he can’t call it a stupid idea, since it’s coming from Armin, but “—little girls in pink tutus hardly fits with my type of music.”

Armin rolled his eyes. “I thought you trusted me to do my job Eren. It’ll be an artistic contrast,” he explained, in a way that Eren could tell meant that if pressed he had a whole lecture to justify the decision and counter any arguments Eren put forward. “And there are no children. Dancers have to listen to the music, and with the language you use, I think we’d get sued.”

“Okay, so who the hell is coming?” Eren said because his mental image ever since he heard the word ballet had been girls in frilly dresses. Wasn’t that what ballet was all about?

“He was a principle danseur of the Trost State Ballet Company and according to my friend he’s been offered a place in the Sina Royal Ballet for the next season.”

Eren shrugged. He could guess that the Sina gig was something fancy if it was in the capital and had royal ties, but the guy’s current job meant nothing to him. Was Trost a good or bad city for ballet? They had a shitty football team and their basketball was mediocre, but the women’s hockey team was crushing it this season so as another feminine activity was ballet the same? But Armin had said he. What the hell did a guy do in ballet? He knew ballroom dancers needed partners, perhaps it was something similar, but Armin didn’t continue with a description of any second person. But there had to be some ridiculous dress, right? Ballet was women running about on tip-toe in sparkling skirts, pretending to be flowers and fairies and stuff, or at least that was how it always looked in cartoons.

Armin sighed. “He sent me a text just a few minutes ago, saying he was arriving,” Armin said. “Come with me now, and I’ll introduce you before he starts getting ready to record. Perhaps that will help you understand better.”

Eren doubts it, but he follows Armin anyway, down the artificially lit corridor of the studio they’re recording the video in, and into the foyer.

“Jean!” Armin called out, and the guy talking to the receptionist pulled him from his condescending slouch against the desk and looked over to him.

“Armin,” he greeted cooly. There’s not a hint of pink or sparkle in sight. Just a lean guy in a leather jacket and faded skinny jeans, with a bored look on his face as he said, “I thought we’d got everything sorted, but now I’m being held up with non-disclosure forms and insurance releases?” with a disdainful wave towards the receptionist who shrugged at Armin.

Armin shakes his head, frowning. “All the paperwork should be in order, I’ll sort it out in a moment. Jean, I thought you might like to meet Eren before you went to warm up. Eren, this is Jean, the dancer for the video,” Armin introduced. “Jean, Eren.”

 _“You’re_ the ballerina?” Eren blurted out.

Jean’s face twisted into a scowl and he said, “I’m not a woman,” raising his eyebrows at Armin in a way that practically screamed ‘this guy?’.

Thinking much the same, Eren opened his mouth. But Mikasa was just down the hall and shot them a look at Jean’s raised voice. It was a ‘I haven’t decided yet if one of your is being sexist, but if you are, there’ll be hell to pay’ kind of look. Eren shut his mouth.

“You’ve got a problem?” Jean snapped.

Did he? Jean didn’t look much like what he’d feared, but just because his street clothes wouldn’t have looked out of place in the pit at one of Eren’s shows didn’t mean he understood Eren’s art — after all, Eren had put on a suit and tie to interview at Starbucks once, but that was about needing money to fund his first EP, not passion.

“You’re wrong for the video,” Eren said bluntly. “The track is anti-establishment—” even if had been written to appease the corporate connections this industry demanded, Eren had clung to that bit of artistic integrity “—it doesn’t exactly go with a dance form that’s about flitting around being pretty and delicate.”

Jean gave a braying laugh. “Shows what you know. Anyway, I doubt anybody is putting that much thought into the videos wannabe rock-star who thinks shrieking into a microphone makes you a musician.”

“My music is punk,” Eren corrected. Actually, neo-grunge thrashcore, but there was no way this guy would understand the nuance of that. Sure, the way he dressed fit the image, but surely that was just a put on because he knew what he was being employed for. Jean made a face like he was thinking of several other adjectives, none of them flattering. Not that Eren cared. “And you’re working on my video,” he reminded Jean.

“Yeah, as a favour, not because it’s such a coveted gig, trying to carry this half-assed excuse for a song,” Jean said, tipping his head towards where Armin was conversing with the receptionist. “And the way I heard it, you gave up creative control, so what you think doesn’t really matter to me.”

Gave up? Sure, Eren had let Armin handle the minutiae since he wasn’t interested in the video for a song he was only releasing to fulfil contractual obligations, but it was still his song and his video, and Jean should show a little more respect.

“Whatever,” Jean said, turning back towards the desk and calling out to Armin that he would change and warm up. As if Eren didn’t even matter.

Fuck that.

Eren stormed back into the studio, looking around at the crew. He wanted to remind everyone that this was his video, but it was hardly the fault of the lighting guys or the set-dressers that the dancer Armin had found was an asshole and losing his temper at them wouldn’t help.

He paced the room, ending up at the side of the filming area as Jean returned, sharing a few quiet words with the crew setting up then heading onto the set.

Eren stared.

Jean was bare from the hips up, revealing that what he lacked in bulk (which has made him look lanky in the jacket) he more than compensated for in tone, with a defined chest that gave way to a narrow waist but tight abs dusted with a trail of blond hair that disappeared below his… no, they couldn’t be trousers, could barely be called leggings.

The jeans he’d worm before had been form-fitting, what he had on now was indecent.

They were tights, Eren decided, judging by cling of the thin material, highlighting not just the outline of Jean’s musculature but every tendon, every vein. It would only take a re-colour for Eren to need no imagination in picturing him naked.

“See, no pink slippers,” Armin teased beside him, making him jump.

Eren nodded, but he was only taking Armin’s word for it. Jean could be wearing six-inch plastic stripper heels for all the attention Eren was paying to his feet. Did ballerinas stuff their tights? Eren had thought he was pretty shameless about his body, it has made sense to start removing his shirt under the heat of stage lights but when he’d heard the screaming how could he resist starting to wear his jeans a little lower, open up his belt to listen to how the crowd would go wild as if this show, this song, might be the time he took the tease all the way. But Jean was going on camera and was apparently prepared for all of Eren’s fans to see exactly what he was packing in those tights and it was… nothing to be ashamed of if was all real, that was for sure.

“I need to make sure the new release forms are filled out,” Armin said. “We’re going to start rolling as soon as Jean is done with his warm up.”

Eren nodded again. He would be fine. He’d just stay right here, watching Jean flex and twist as he stepped into lunges that strained the already stretched fabric of his tights until Eren wasn’t sure they could be called opaque any longer, as he stretched all the way down into, fuck, a full split that has Eren wondering if (more than a little hoping that) the material might split wide open. Instead it just stretches further, definitely a hint of sheerness now, Eren’s dirtiest daydreams couldn’t make this stuff up as Jean leaned forward until his chest was near flat to the floor, and then, just as Eren’s has to swallow or risk being caught drooling, sprung back to his feet, revealing that those tights did nothing to keep certain parts of his anatomy from an eye-catching bounce, and turned to the bar against the wall. Eren had assumed from the height that it was intended as a handhold, but Jean swung one leg up to balance his foot on it with the ease of a single step.

Huh.

Then Jean’s arms unfurled upward, stretching out his back as he reached towards the ceiling before once again swinging his whole body down, bending himself literally in two as his hands wrapped around his ankle.

 _Huh_.

Eren leaned back against the wall, watching Jean stretch, and if his own jeans were growing ever more snug… well Eren might not want Jean in his video but he was only flesh and blood and how else could a guy react to those legs and that ass in barely there tights. Especially when Jean’s warm-ups seemed to consist entirely of revealing himself to be more and more flexible. Who knew it was possible for a guy to stretch his legs that far over his head? Not Eren, who had always written it off as an anatomically implausible fantasy.

Fortunately there was enough work in prepping for a video shoot, nobody paid Eren any attention as he ogled. And when the director called for Jean to finish his warm up and prepare for their first take, Eren willed his dick back to a semi that could be mistaken for bunching fabric by reminding himself that, whatever Jean looked like, the best trait to have in bed was enthusiasm and a guy as stuck up as Jean was probably didn’t so much fuck as impersonate a cold fish and lay passive and think of Beethoven while he waited for it to be over, and went to stand at the back where he’d have a full view of the room.

It didn’t matter how hot Jean was, when his demeanour was so frigid.

A few quick words with the producer and then Jean was stepping out into the centre of the floor, standing before the cameras like a bomb about to go off as the crew hushed and opening drumbeat began to play.

At least this injustice wasn’t fucking up a song Eren was actually proud of. The track was bland stuff, cobbled together from old notes with the assistance of hired songwriters after they’d insisted that he wasn’t yet enough of a superstar to keep touring on his old material indefinitely without selling records, Eren’s case of writers block be damned.

His label would be satisfied with a shitty, thrown-together video too, which was good because that was all they were going to get. Every step of the dance were technically impressive, the raw strength and the way Jean’s muscles flexed as he leapt and spun was a sight to see. The softness Eren had feared was absent, Jean radiated power, but it was all held too tightly in check when Eren’s music, his manifesto, was all about freedom.

The precision and control to the movements was so at odds with the wildness of the track, even one so infused with executive meddling and he recalled Armin’s words about contrast but looking at Jean he couldn’t believe them. It wasn’t an artistic offset, it was just wrong. Eren wanted to storm out onto the floor and push Jean, make him unleash that strength, press him beyond merely bending, not to breaking but to snapping back, so the explosive force he so clearly had the potential for was unleashed in harmony with the music.

But instead he watched as in perfect imitation of a music box figure Jean followed the tune to its close, winding to a stop that left Eren with the unsatisfied feeling of the song having played out rather than any sort of finale. There were a few beads of sweat of Jean’s brow, from the exertion or perhaps the heat of the lights, but he held his ending pose perfectly, no sign of fatigue or unsteadiness after what must have been a physically demanding routine — even his hair was rigid, styled into a motionlessness that had Eren’s fingers twitching to muss it up.

“That was a solid first take,” Armin called out. “I think we have some lighting issues to resolve, but a little fine tuning is normal when making a video. Nobody is expected us to get everything wrapped today.

“Fine tuning?” Eren scoffed. “He was a mess out there,” or rather, the opposite of a mess, but this video wasn’t supposed to be about meticulous perfection.

“Oh, like you have a fucking clue,” Jean said, stalking over. “You’re gonna stand there talking shit about me? I’ve seen your other videos, they were hideous, and if you’re like that when you perform it’s a miracle you ever stay on beat with all that rhythmless flailing.”

“Of course they were, there’s the fucking point,” Eren spat back. “It’s supposed to be a break from the manufactured fake shit society feeds us, trying to convince us to spend money in pursuit of unattainable perfection!” And it all fell apart if the video was three and a half minutes of Jean’s precise grace, as close to perfect in his movements as a human could be.

“God, that’s the most pretentious bullshit I’ve ever heard.” Jean stepped forward, getting right up in Eren’s face. “You sell records don’t you?”

“The fact we’re required to function within the system to survive, doesn’t mean I can’t critique—”

“Survive? You know when Armin pitched this job to me he mentioned your last album sales, right? You were nominated for a fucking Grammy. Newsflash asshole, you’re more mainstream than any ballet!”

Urgh, that Grammy nomination. It had been exciting when he’d first heard the news, but so many people threw it back in his face as undermine his alternative cred, but, “If I’m mainstream, it’s because my music speaks to the people. Who watches ballet? Nobody but isolated rich people who know nothing about the world normal people live in? What I create is real, it’s raw, it’s—”

“Oh, you want something raw, huh?”

Eren laughed. Now he’d seen him dance, Eren knew Jean was strong, but years of experience had also taught him physical strength wasn’t as important as attitude and a guy that tightly wound would never do anything other than sneer and scowl and—

Sucker punch him right in the mouth.

The first step back was pure surprise, the second was because Jean’s strength was in more than his legs.

“Fuck!” Eren spat blood sideways. Fuck, Jean had got him good. He slid his tongue over his teeth, nothing felt loose, but his lip was split badly enough that Mikasa was probably going to suggest stitches when she saw it. But Eren had got exactly what he wanted, something raw, something real, a break in Jean’s control.

He held a hand up to ward off the various crew members closing in. He didn’t want them to come between him and Jean, to break the burning tension as Jean bared his teeth. If he’d looked good before it was nothing compared to how he looked with Eren’s blood on his knuckles, tense with a fury that he might actually unleash.

“I came here to do a job and I’m doing it well,” Jean hissed. “But if you think I’m gonna be linked to somebody with your shitty attitude, you’ve got another thing coming. Tell your team to call me when you actually know what you’re doing.”

And Eren slipped straight past discrete half-chub and into wildly inappropriate for a workplace setting levels of hard, but since Jean just punched him he wasn’t sure professional standards still applied between them (and most of the crew have been averting their eyes since the yelling started) and anyway he’s certain that the clinging fabric of Jean’s tights is revealing even more than it had previously — it seems Eren isn’t the only one who gets his blood up from fighting.

The bump of Jean’s shoulder against his own as Jean brushes past him to walk away is electrifying and Eren can’t help but turning in his wake, takes a few steps after him before Armin is grabbing his arm to hold him back, leaving him with nothing to do but watch the view as Jean walks away.

“Are you okay?” Armin asked.

“Yeah, it’s just a split lip,” Eren said. “I’ve had them before. I just hope it stops bleeding before Mikasa sees.”

“I’m sorry, I should have... Jean’s very good, but… well, now you’ve seen his temper. He’s had some artistic disagreements in the past. I didn’t want to bias you against him, but the reason he’s leaving Trost is because of an altercation with their choreographer got physical. If I’d known that wasn’t a one off…”

“What did he do?”

“Pardon?”

“To the choreographer, what did he do? And why?”

Armin rubbed at his neck. “I don’t know the details. Broke a bottle over the guy’s head was what I heard, but I assumed the story had been exaggerated in the retelling. I do know he was standing up for some junior dancers who were being overworked, which is why the company has kept it quiet and he can still transfer to Sina, and why I didn’t hold the incident against him.”

A bottle to the head? Of a guy who was treating other people like shit? If Jean had brought that energy to begin with, Eren wouldn’t have needed to pick at him.

“But Eren…” Armin sighed. “The way you were acting towards him was rude and unprofessional.”

“I wasn’t that bad,” Eren protested. Yes, he’d been checking Jean out and he’d pressed the fight once he’d realised Jean would argue back, but Jean had flown right off the handle in hitting him… and it had been glorious.

“You’ve been glaring at him since he started warming up.”

Was that how it had looked on the outside? Eren could correct Armin, but explaining that he’d been memorising the shape of Jean’s ass for later daydreams about fucking it straight through those tights would just seem like a different flavour of unprofessional.

Armin is still talking, about how rude Eren was and how lucky they’d been to convince Jean to take the job, how now they’d have to find somebody else to do the video; but Jean hadn’t said he quit, he said Armin should call him when Eren knew what he was doing. To get as good as Jean was, took more than dedication, more than discipline. It took an obsessive refusal to back down from a challenge. In dance it was perfection, but in the moments after their confrontation the challenge had been Eren and there was no way one measly punch would have quenched a fire like that. Jean would be back for more, especially if Eren threw down the gauntlet.

“I want him to do the whole album,” Eren decided. “And not just the singles, everything.” Jean was all wrong for this video, but he’d all but offered to come back if Eren could really work with him, and Eren knew he could. None of this shitty contrast, the music and Jean would have to go together. It would be a concept album, art, and Eren could experiment with classical influences to begin with, Historia had talked about collaborating with him before and didn't she play the electric violin?, he could let Jean start with his tightly wound control then build the music until by the end of it Eren would have him flying apart to screaming guitar and throbbing bass.

There was a long pause. He could practically see the Armin sorting through his questions and deciding which was most important to ask.

“What album, Eren?” Armin said. “I know you haven’t written anything in months.”

He hadn’t had anything worth writing about in months. How could there be fire with nothing to burn? But now his fingers itched for a pen and his guitar.

Jean was Eren’s new muse.

**Author's Note:**

> Musicians and escape are kind of tangential here but I’ve been thinking about Jean doing ballet for a while now so I bent the prompt to my whims.
> 
> Title from Animal Skin by Bryan Dunn.
> 
> Also, just on the off chance that this is relevant to anybody: if you've a non-account holding user being impacted by the archive's [current emergency measures](https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/15379) and would like an invite, let me know because I have several waiting to be used!


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